I realized I am getting older because...

[DukeCity]

I think NBC (?) bought the broadcast rights to the movie in the US. A few years ago, it was on every channel, every day starting just after Thanksgiving; even that horrendous colorized version.

I guess the thinking at NBC was to show it just once or twice during the season to make it a "special holiday event".

So they are bought the copyright of our memory.

Watch out, someone will buy the recipe of the apple pie, or try to get a patent for sunday's bbq. One of these days we will have to pay royalties for everything.

Oh porcy, there's no copyright of our memories! Those memories live in our hearts! They're in the wonder a child feels on Christmas morning. They're in the way everything feels so much more peaceful just after the winter's first snowfall. They're in... aww, fuck it! You're right, it's just The Man sticking it to us again.

[sheldonm]

I think NBC (?) bought the broadcast rights to the movie in the US. A few years ago, it was on every channel, every day starting just after Thanksgiving; even that horrendous colorized version.

I guess the thinking at NBC was to show it just once or twice during the season to make it a "special holiday event".

Frank Capra was mad at his attorney, and never got around to signing the forms which would allow him to extend the copyright. So the film fell into public domain.

Once it was in P.D., it was free to everyone, and all the TV stations showed it all the time.

It is my opinion that this P.D. exposure is the reason for the film's popularity. I'm not commenting on its quality. There are a lot of good movies that aren't as popular. I say that it became popular because it was aired so often, and became a Christmas staple on US televison.

Then a court ruled that although under some circumstances a movie can go into public domain, the copyright of the music and soundtrack is covered by a different law. This ruling in effect meant that TV stations could show the video for free but not the audio.

So the movie effectively went back into copyright. It was then that NBC bought the exclusive right to show it on TV. And NBC shows it only once or twice a year.

I don't know when NBC's contract expires. I also don't know when the movie goes into P.D. again in the US - probably the same 75 years as for audio recordings.

edit for typo

I thought it was Ted Turner who boughts the rights???

m~

[BERIGAN]

Well, I recalled Republic getting the rights back...but I guess Paul Harvey didn't tell me the rest of the story...

from Wikipedia....

Public Domain

National Telefilm Associates took over the rights to the U.M.&M. library soon afterward. A clerical error at NTA prevented the copyright from being renewed properly in 1974, however. Around this time, people began to take a second look at this film. A popular fallacy began that it entered the public domain and many television stations began airing the film without paying royalties. The film was still protected by virtue of it being a derivative work of all the other copyrighted material used to produce the film such as the script, music, etc. whose copyrights were renewed. In the 1980s (the beginning of the home video era) the film became a perennial holiday favorite. For several years, it became expected that the movie would be shown multiple times on at least one station and on multiple stations in the same day, often at the same or overlapping times. It was a common practice for American viewers to jump in and out of viewing the movie at random points, confident they could easily pick it up again at a later time. The film's warm and familiar ambiance gave even isolated scenes the feel of holiday "comfort food" for the eyes and ears. The film's accidental public domain success is often cited as a reason to limit copyright terms, which have been frequently extended by Congress in the United States.

The film's success decades after its release came as a welcome but unexpected surprise those for worked on it, including Capra. "It's the damnedest thing I've ever seen," he told the Wall Street Journal in 1984. "The film has a life of its own now and I can look at it like I had nothing to do with it. I'm like a parent whose kid grows up to be president. I'm proud … but it's the kid who did the work. I didn't even think of it as a Christmas story when I first ran across it. I just liked the idea."

Two colorized versions have since been produced; they are widely considered inferior to the black-and-white original and are often held up by opponents of colorization as an example of the flaws associated with the process: in the scene of the dinner-table chat between George and Peter Bailey, for example, James Stewart's shirt is conspicuously pink. For many years, some television stations paid substantial royalties to show a colorized version, figuring that color would attract more viewers.

In 1993, Republic Pictures, which was the successor to NTA, relied on the 1990 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Stewart v. Abend (which involved the movie Rear Window) to enforce its claim of copyright; while the film's copyright had not been renewed, it was a derivative work of various works that were still copyrighted. As a result, the film is no longer shown as much on television (NBC is currently licensed to show the film on U.S. network television, and only shows it traditionally twice during the holidays, with one showing primarily on Christmas Eve from 8-11 Eastern time), the colorized versions have been withdrawn, and Republic now has exclusive ancillary rights to the film. Artisan Entertainment (under license from Republic) took over home video rights in the mid-1990s, Artisan was later sold to Lions Gate Entertainment, which continued to hold home video rights until late 2005 when they reverted to Republic's sister studio Paramount, whose parent is Viacom.

[Dan Gould]

One thing is for sure: the movie was not a major box office success when it was released.

[Randy Twizzle]

Here's the original NY Times review